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Feb 10 2010

What's the BUZZ Tell Me What's Happening with Facebook vs Google Buzz?

Category: community building, connections, lifestreaming, social media, speed the web, tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 6:20 pm

Poor Google social media smart guys. They have sooooo much momentum and so much "buzz" around anything they launch and yet they really have not had a home run. And it's not that they haven't tried, they have: case Orkut = sharable profile. Jaiku = Twitter wanna be, and most recently the service I can't even get the advocates for the service to really respond to: WAVE.

So now enter BUZZ. Ho hum. Are you surprised that it doesn't sync with Facebook yet? Are you really surprised by that?

FastCompany tries to make news out of the launch, but comes up short with this scoring.

1. Media Integration: Buzz wins simply because it's easier to connect than Facebook. Well, at least to Picassa and Flikr and Twitter. (I'd actually score this for Facebook, cause you can integrate almost every account.)

2. Interface: Facebook wins. (Ha ha, we'll get to Facebook's new interface violations in a bit.)

3. Fun Factor: Facebook wins. (Yeah, it's a social thing after all. FB has games, causes, pages… Buzz has… well, g-mail.)

Okay so what's so great about buzz?

1. It's from Google. (Okay I think we've established that the Google umbrella offers little in terms of will we use it, will people flock to the party if we build a new party room bolted on the side of gmail?

2. Nobody's on it yet. (Are we really ready to start building our social networks again, on another service? Well, are you?)

3. It's got the big "so what" tag on it. What does buzz actually do that is interesting, unique or more efficient?

It might really be more of a competitor to Tweetdeck and Seesmic as a megaphone for initiating your tweets, bleeps, pings, wall scrivings and giving you some Google love in the process. *Might be.*

So what's the resistance?

Or for me, what's the value of spending time putting together my profile and my connections on Buzz? At the moment I don't see it. And I AM an early adopter, but not necessarily an early evangelist.

The part of Google I discovered last night when the "See Buzz in your G-Mail Account" link was not doing anything was this.

They might not get my mindshare with Buzz, but they got my Blackberry coming and going. I could care less about Buzz, frankly. But I want the WAVE to work, I just can't find anyone else quite as passionate about the WAVE as I am. At least not in my limited WAVE-lets here in Austin, Texas.

Let's see if anyone uses WAVE at SXSWi this year. I'm pretty sure you won't hear a word about Buzz. And I'm pretty sure you will still hear too much about iPhone apps and APIs and Twitter-enabled apps.

I can't wait to see how this pans out. Buzz – meh. WAVE – bring it!

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/you-buzz

Interesting note: Since I use FriendFeed to integrate all of my social networks, I wonder if I can add my BUZZ to FF yet? Or how soon will a WordPress plug-in like Sociable add BUZZ as a new option? Let's see: Jan 10, 2010, 6:24 CST.

Tags: advocates, blackberry, but is it fun, buzz factor, buzz vs facebook, early adopter, evangelist, facebook, FastCompany, friendfeed, fun factor, g-mail, google, google WAVE, jaiku, lack of buzz, media integration, megaphone, momentum, orkut, Picassa, ping.fm, seesmic, social media smart guys, social networks, socialable, spending time, the social media eyeball, tweetdeck, twitter client, WAVE, what's so great about buzz?, where the part is, wordpress, your social media eyeball

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Jan 04 2010

CES Day One: Apple BUYS Twitter and Shows their Tablet Computer, the iSlate iPad

Category: iPad-iWay!, just for fun, social media, tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 10:40 pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Monday Jan. 4, 2010, Las Vegas
Following directly on the surprise release of the Apple iSlate iPad on opening day at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, Apple and Twitter announced Apple's purchase of Twitter for 2 billion dollars in cash and stock. Jobs says they will phase out all non-Mac OS apps and access to the popular microblogging service. "We liked Twitter from the beginning. And we think people will like it more on a Mac so in 2011 we will begin phasing out all access to machines running non-Apple OS services."

When Microsoft spokesman at CES, Haywood J Blow, was asked about Apple's daring move he said, "When the corporate customer starts asking for Twitter, we will buy or invent something like Twitter. Apple has not won this war yet." Shares of MSFT, DELL, HP all fell sharply in after-hours trading.

Tweetdeck and Seesmic announced their immediate support of the move saying it would reduce their development costs and give the end-user a more mac-like experience. Google had no immediate comment but shareholders voted to up their purchase of Apple stock by 20% a year. And a new version of Mac-only Google WAVE was also rumored to be only a few months down the roadmap.

Asked for a comment, the creator or Tweetdeck Iain Dodsworth said, "I'm a Mac. And all of our developers are on Mac's so why wouldn't we be the first open Twitter client to close down other platforms? By the end of 2010, if Windows is still the dominant computing platform, I'll start using Seesmic and Hootesuite. Seriously!"

Michael Dell was contacted via his iPhone after the announcement, but offered no comment. He did update his Twitter status with this "Oh, that's funny. I think that guy's been writing about Dell for over a year now, ever since he left." Bill Gates' iPhone was forwarding calls to his Google Voice account.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/apple-CES

Even before the announcement Apple's new ad campaign was plastered across the CES walls today read, "Of course, tweeting is Better on a Mac."

Tags: apple buys twitter, apple inote, apple ipad, apple iSlate, Apple's new ad campaign, better on a mac, bill gates, ces 2010, CES day one, CES las vegas, day 1 CES, google voice, google WAVE, google wave for mac, Haywood J Blow, hootesuite, i'm a mac, iain dodsworth, iphone, islate demo, islate on youtube, islate video, it was my idea, mac, mac-only, micheal dell, more like a mac, non-apple execs, non-Mac OS, opening day of CES 2010, seesmic, steve jobs, surprise islate release, tablet computing, the year of the Mac, touchscreen tablet, tweetdeck, tweeting is better on a mac, twitter, twitter fun, twitter humor, year of the iSlate, year of the tablet

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Dec 21 2009

Gathering Twitter Followers and Jettisoning Them With Powerful Tools

Category: about me, lifestreaming, social media, speed the web, tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 5:18 pm

It's been a few months since I started editing my follower lists with a hard blade. I was just cresting over 7,000 followers when I began massive unfollows, or layoffs as I like to call them.

I used TwitBlock first to begin weeding the people from my Friend-stream. (Folks that I was following.) And just a few days ago I used a tool, that seemed to be FREE, called TheTwitCleaner. The first run gave me a list of over 1,000 people that I should consider unfollowing. Various criteria were used to calculate the spammy tweeters, and I had to do a lot of deslecting of peeps I wanted to keep tracking. When I finally got the list down to about 520 people, I paid, gladly, five dollars to have Mr. TwitCleaner do the work for me. Turns out he accidentally unfollowed all 1,000 people, but when I contacted him, he fixed me all up again.

I haven't been back to Twitblock for a while. But while I'm at it, might as well do a quick run and purge.

Here's the typical report back from TwitBlock:

I think it's pretty easy to see that #1, #2 and #4 are spammers. I'll have to analyze ScottMarcaccio and vbiShow. But I'm pretty sure I don't follow any "show"s.

So for today I am a bit lighter in my follower count and a ton lighter in my friends. If I could just get Tweetdeck on my Blackberry I'd be a happy tweeter.

Please, for 2010 vow to watch what you tweet and mind the spam. Together we can clean the stream and "report and block" the baddies. Let's all be better tweeters in 2010.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-2010

Additional Twitter-related Posts:

Tags: better tweeters, spammy tweeters, spammy tweets, thetwitcleaner, tweestats, tweetdeck, twitblock, twitblock.org, twitter, twitter 2010, twitter followers, twitter spam, twitter statistics, twitterstats, unfollowing

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Dec 12 2009

Oh Twitter: What Have I Done to Deserve This? And What is a Twitter LIST?

Category: social media, tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 5:41 pm

So I'm setting up my new mbp, loving the idea of starting fresh. No unnecessary FF addons, no apps I don't use, only what's necessary. And I'm doin my thing this morning and Tweetdeck (one of my essentials) comes up with this message.

Ah, I bet many of you have seen these messages right? Well, I had tweeked my Tweetdeck to poll things more judiciously on my personal machine. So now I'm locked out of my usability tool for Twitter. Yuk.

Okay, so I'll do some reading and responding from Twitter.com. And right there at the bottom of every page is a teaser:

Oh is that right? I wonder. Maybe if you're following about 10 people. I understand that Tweetdeck is available on an iPhone, but I'm a BB thank you very much. So when I go swimming in the river of tweets on my phone, it's useless. I recall back in 2006 when Twitter launched at SXSWi, I, like everyone else that year, subscribed and attached the stream to my phone. But I didn't get it. And I didn't want to get it on my phone. I'm not that interested in where you are going for coffee at 2am. I wasn't back then and I'm still not.

Okay, so what about these lists Twitter has added? What are they used for?

Here's what the Twitter blog says about them. (I'm sure Mashable has a very good how-to about them, but I haven't looked for it.)

So it is kinda cool seeing that folks have added me to lists that they have created. As long as I'm not on one called **sholes! How would Twitter deal with that? As in negative or slamming Twitter lists? Oh well…

So here's the little button that I caution you before you start following LISTS rather than folks.

I tried a few list follows and my Twitter stream went all wonky. Suddenly tweets were showing up and I couldn't unfollow the person. Tweetdeck kept telling me, you are not following "@MoMoney." And so according to the explanation above you can follow lists, but you can't unfollow individuals from those lists that you follow.

So now, lists to me are interesting distractions if I'm looking to see who has put me in a group and who else they have added to that said group. Again, I am just waiting until the negative groups start getting attention. I'm sure they are already out there. But that will be another story. I'm sure we could all think of a few people we could add to a list like that.

Update: Twitter admits folks are getting random tweets in their timeline. Here's the post on their blog about it.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/lists-on-twitter

A few more Twitter-related posts:

Tags: lists on twitter, random tweets, rate limit exceeded, simplify your tweetstream, tweetdeck, twitter, twitter error, twitter lists, twitter on your phone, twitter problems, unfollow

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Dec 08 2009

Unfollow Friday: Sparking Anger and Dropping Followers Like Flies (updated 12-8-09)

Category: about me, social media, tech opinion, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 10:08 am

UPDATE: 12-8-09: Updating the stats from a four day unfollowing spree!

My followers count has dropped from 7082 to 6708, or a LOSS of 374 followers. ;-0

My following stream has dropped from 7498 to 5894, or a DROP of 1604! ;-)

Thats a 4-to-1 ratio. Drop 4 and 1 of them will unfollow you.

And I tell you, it is as much fun figuring out who to UNFOLLOW these days as it was figuring out who TO follow. Give it a whirl, not with my tweets please.

+++

I have been culling who I'm following lately. And once I got going I was fairly ruthless. Several criteria came up for me as I began the process of separating the noise from the signal.

What I DO NOT LIKE:

1. Quote posts. If you don't have anything original to say, don't tweet.

2. Going to the bathroom posts. Lunch, bathroom, diet coke, i'm not really interested.

3. What I'm eating posts. Foodies unite, I'm just not that into it.

4. I'm so sexy posts. If your avatar is too suggestive… what are you selling? I'm probably not buying.

5. Your tweets are all about SELLING, deals, offers, bargans, specials, coupons, nope, not interested.

6. You don't have a real name on your bio.

7. You don't have a real link on your bio.

8. Your twitter ID contains SEO, SEM, MLM, Realtor, Super, Guru, Money, Success, Coach. Um… to me you need to show in your content and thoughts not in your cute twitter ID.

9. All you do is RT. It's fine to RT smart stuff, but you should be generating some smart stuff yourself.

10. Your tweets are repetitive and uninspiring. As Seth Godin says in Tribes, no one forwards a boring email, same for Tweets.

11. Your posts are more like newsfeeds than original content. I don't need any more RSS inputs, thanks.

And then I've just unfollowed some folks just because…

What I DO LIKE:

1. Original thinking.

2. Insightful observations on social media, pr, marketing, innovation, green, entrepreneurship.

3. Something funny. You have a knack for making me smile for no reason at all. (I have a thing for tweeting cats.)

4. I know you. (I will admit to unfollowing friends who fall under the fault category too many times.

Here is my TwitterCounter stat for people I'm following:

So the triage has been harsh on my followers as well. A tit for tat kinda repercussion, I imagine. Here is my TwitterCounter stat for people who follow me:

And then you get people like this fella who took offense at me saying I was unfollowing folks that quoted or mentioned Tiger Woods.

And his snipes went down from there. I don't now where he came from or what prompted his vitriol, but he seems to have begun targeting others with his wiseacre comments. You can find him yourself if you want to see how repetitive his pestering became.

Ah but the balance is returning. Less empty tweets, fewer empty followers. And Mr. Badera, I'm not labeling them, I'm just sayin, my tastes are different.

Learning all the time. And what I am learning from this Twitter drop is I need something to energize my enthusiasm about Twitter. It's kinda spammy and boring. Lists are cool. Groups are cool. Tweetdeck is indispensable. But getting "value" out of Twitter these days is dependent on my own participation and aggressive weeding.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/reducing-noise

Two super cats that tweet: Sockington and Sparklecat.

A few more Twitter-related posts:

Tags: agressive weeding, Andrew Badera, cats that tweet, empty followers, fewer empty followers, less empty tweets, sockamillion, sockington, sparklecat, tweespam, tweetdeck, twitter drop, twitter groups, twitter is not an rss feed, twitter lists, twitter spam, twittercounter, twittercounter.com, unfollowing